emorandum 



Presented by the Greek Members 
of the Turkish Parliament 

To 

The American Commission on 
Mandates Over Turkey 



"t^*-«- 



Published by 

THE AMERICAN-HELLENIC SOCIETY, Inc., 
Columbia University, NewYork 

19 19 



Memorandum 



Presented by the Greek Members 
of the Turkish Parliament 

To 

The American Commission on 
Mandates Over Turkey 



Published by 

THE AMERICAN-HELLENIC SOCIETY, Inc. 
Columbia University, NewYork 

19 19 



^ql'm 



i Trfinsfar 
JUL 15 ms 






Memorandum 

Presented by the Greek Members of the Turkish 
Parliament 

To The American Commission on Mandates 
Over Turkey. 

The undersigned Greek deputies, as members of the Tur- 
kish Parliament during the whole war, were in the best 
possible position to observe from the very beginning the suffer- 
ings of our people, to understand their sentiments and to 
realize what their desires and claims may be at the present 
time. We therefore consider it our duty to submit the follow- 
ing statement to the Honorable American Commission on 
Mandates over Turkey, whose well known impartiality per- 
mits us to believe that the claims of the Greek population 
in Turkey will be considered favorably and will be eventually 
made known to your Government as well as to your liberal 
country. 

I. 

A brief inquiry is sufficient to make clear the aspirations 
of the Greek people in Turkey: any Greek of any social stand- 
ing, whether young or old, man or woman, will quite spon- 
taneously and without the slightest hesitation give the fol- 
lowing answer when questioned upon the subject: 

1. We demand the total abolition of the Turkish rule over 
the Greeks. 

2. We desire to be united to the Greek Kingdom, thus 
forming one national state, under a democratic government. 

The Greek nation knows its past history and remembers 
it, our people's hearts are filled with the ambition to create 
a future equal to their past; this state of mind sufficiently 



explains their being utterly adverse to the idea of living under 
another nation's rule, even if this nation be highly civilized; 
moreover, their experience of the rule that has weighed so 
heavily upon them up to this day has been such that it easily 
explains the willingness of the people to submit, if necessary, 
to any sacrifices, in order to compass their national unity. 

What has this rule been like? 

A few cultured men, who contrived to escape on the day 
Constantinople was taken (May 29th, 1453) took refuge in 
Italy and brought with them the first spark of civilization, 
the pure light of which now shines in your great country. 
Those who were left behind were slaughtered on the very 
same day; women were enslaved, monuments and works of 
art were destroyed, and the whole city was set on fire and 
burnt to ashes; thus the Turkish rule was established. 

There followed the dreadful trials of the next five cen- 
turies: enslavement, deportation, robbery, plundering, con- 
versions to Mohamedanism by force, a systematic seizing of 
Christian boys to fill up the Janissary ranks, then the 
slaughter of 50,000 Greeks in Peloponnese, in 1769, the 
massacres in Chios, Smyrna, Aivali, Constantinople and Adri- 
anople, during the Greek war of Independence of 1821-1828, 
the bloody events in Crete and Samos, the massacres in Syria 
and finally the recent Armenian and Greek tragedies, which 
ended in the extermination of over 1,500,000 Christians in the 
course of five years; all these events were no sudden out- 
breaks of a momentary national hatred, but repeated mani- 
festations of a situation which one may say constitutes the 
normal state of things in this country. According to the prin- 
ciples of the Turkish rulers. Christians were slaves and 
nothing more and the lowest Mohamedans had the right to 
dispose of their lives as they pleased; their honor and their 
properties and belongings were at the Moslems' mercy and 
the pains they endured when under torture were the daily 
entertainments which their masters enjoyed most. 

The Turks were never lacking in false pretences to deceive 
the civilized world each time its wrath was aroused; Just at 
present they are trying, among other strange assertions, to 
make people believe that the Turkish nation is not respon- 



sible for the massacres of the last five years and that the 
Committee of Union and Progress bears the whole responsi- 
bility for these crimesj Sultan Mehmed VI, himself 
expressed this opinion to the correspondent of the "Morning 
Post" in a recent interview, as if it were possible for a poli- 
tical party to carry on a great war, during four years against 
the greatest Powers in the world and to order ferocious 
slaughter of the non-Moslem populations, without being the 
true representative of the national will. His Majesty has 
forgotten that events of this kind have occurred more than 
once in Turkish history and that the Committee certainly 
cannot be held responsible for events, which took place before 
it was formed and after it was dissolved. The Young Turks 
are, after all, the offspring of the Turkish nation and they 
exemplify the purest expression of the Turkish soul and 
mentality; among other things, the Turkish nation bears the 
responsibility for this political monster's existence, though 
it now tries to hide its own sins behind it. The Sultan him- 
self who now holds the Committee responsible for every thing 
done, was a partisan of the German and Turkish alliance, 
as he has himself officially declared. The only Turk one 
could ever imagine to be against the Young Turks might be 
the late ex-Sultan Abd-ul-Hamid who was dethroned by them, 
and yet he made use of espionage, censorship, persecutions 
and murders; he established extraordinary courts of Justice 
and ordered various tortures to be carried out at the police 
stations; he also gave over to the late General von der Goltz 
the whole military power of Turkey, after having laid out 
with him his great Panislamic plan, which was directed 
against Christianity; it was he who called the German Kaiser 
the protector of three hundred million Mohammedans, who 
ordered the Armenian massacres and who fought against 
all the Christian element in the country; in short, Abd-ul- 
Hamid did exactly what the Committee did after him, with 
the sole difference that the Young Turks improved his me- 
thods, just as the present rulers of Turkey have improved 
and perfected theirs. 

For instance, the Young Turks also had a gang of mur- 
derers at their orders, but they had no guns and cannons, as 



do the bands who now serve the Turkish Government in Asia 
Minor. Neither did the Young Turks know the system of 
a double Government, i. e., one established at Erzeroum, re- 
cruiting troops in spite of the clauses of the Armistice, and 
another at Constantinople, refusing to acknowledge these 
doings and pretending to know nothing about them. The 
man who declared in the Turkish Senate that Wilson's prin- 
ciples or any other democratic system would only mean ruin 
and destruction to Turkey was the now famous Grand Vizier 
Ferid Pasha. In an essay published long before the per- 
secutions had started, Ahmed Ferid Bey, Turkish Minister and 
colleague in the Cabinet of Ferid Pasha, expresses the opi- 
nion that the only means of salvation for the Turkish Empire 
is the extermination of the peoples in it who do not speak 
the Turkish Tongue. Whether they belong to the absolutist, 
constitutional, unionist or liberal party, the Turks have been, 
are and always will be the same; hard towards the weak, 
cringing before the powerful, and fanatical enemies to every 
Christian, with devastation and destruction as their chief oc- 
cupation. This nation has never produced anything and has 
only destroyed what others have built. The only economical 
measures applied are plunder and theft, their only means 
of ruling the country are violence and slaughter. They con- 
trived to deceive Europe during a whole century, by using all 
kinds of artful designs and promising reforms, which, when- 
ever applied, were followed by outbreaks more ferocious than 
before. Their history is now so well-known that no one can 
believe thier false promises, their calumnies about other 
nations, their forged statistics or their traditional diplomatic 
policy, which consists in disturbing and destroying the harmo- 
ny existing between the civilized Powers. 

Formerly, when the vacillating European policy found 
no other solution of the question than the maintenance of 
the Turkish Empire, we were forced to submit to the tyrant's 
stern rule, for diplomacy had left us at his mercy. Fortu- 
nately, this power and strength are now shattered; the 
monster is worn out and exhausted and can terrify us no 
longer. He fills us now only with disgust. Had the Allied 
Powers not undertaken to carry out the conditions of the 



armistice and to solve the Eastern question, i. e., had we 
remained alone against the Turks, we would have had the 
strength to take away from them their broken weapons. 
This is the surest sign that the Turkish domination over other 
nations is now a thing of the past. This domination was 
a stain on civilization and its abolition will prove beneficial 
to the Turks themselves; having proved unable to govern 
their own people and living henceforth in Asia Minor, between 
the boundaries of Armenia and Greece, they will finally realize 
that there is such a thing as justice among human 
beings and that it is the only source of citizens' rights and 
duties; such a rule will enable them, in case they should prove 
capable of it, to conquer by the development of civilization 
the country they wanted to keep everlastingly under their 
sway, by the use of violence and oppression. 

On the contrary, the Greeks and Armenians living In 
Turkey have proved in various ways that they deserve being 
given their independence and freedom; although these peoples 
have lived under the hardest bondage known in history, they 
have managed to maintain their national existence; they have 
founded prosperous communities, and built schools and cha- 
ritable establishments; they have engaged in various trades 
and handicrafts; they have built beautiful homes and were 
even the architects of many of the Turkish buildings of note; 
they were progressive in all professional lines and managed 
to use the knowledge acquired from their contemporaries to 
improve the situation of the country, whose rulers had en- 
slaved them and this in spite of the various obstacles raised 
by the government. They fostered their national literature, 
they produced poets, philosophers and authors; all trades^ 
industry and shipping were carried on by them; they were 
at the head of financial affairs; with the exception of the 
cereals, which were largely cultivated by the Turks, all the 
other products, which require a careful and methodical cul^ 
tivation were, one may say, monopolized by them. i 

Moreover, the Greeks took an active part in the struggle 
of the whole race against the Turks. During the last war 
they formed the nucleus of the national movement in Greece 
in favor of the Allies and of the organization for the National 



Defence in Macedonia; they fought by the side of the Allies 
and in Turkey herself they, like the Armenians, lost hundreds 
of thousands of their nationals as victims to the ferocity of 
the Turks, who declared, together with the Germans, that 
the Greeks deserved this punishment for having refused to 
fight with the Turks and for having openly shown their par- 
tiality to the Allied Powers. 

These two Christian peoples in Turkey have the right to 
be proud of their achievements in the present and the past, 
and they have shown by what they have done while in 
bondage what they may be expected to accomplish when once 
they have won back their independence. 

To the above statement we would add the following. Those, 
who undertake the settlement of the Oriental Question should 
not consider in the case of the Greeks the question of their 
independence only. It is a well-known fact that our nation 
deeply feels the necessity of a union with Greece and that this 
longing is so strong that is impossible for any of us to 
conceive the idea of freedom, independence and political exist- 
ence, without connecting this with the idea of a complete 
union with Greece. As far as the essentials of our national 
life are concerned, this union is already a fact that has been 
automatically accomplished during the period of Turkish do- 
mination, in spite of the efforts, which these barbarous and 
foolish rulers vainly made to check it by erecting Chinese 
walls between us and Greece. Among other ways, in which 
Greece has influenced our institutions, our educational system 
is exactly similar to the system applied in Greece; there are 
Greeks from Turkey in every Greek battalion and in every 
unit of the Greek navy. 

In every war waged by Greece and in every revolution of 
Greeks, aid was given by the Greeks of Turkey. No institu- 
tions were established there without a contribution from us. 
AH Greek families living in Turkey have relatives in Greece. 
Our descent from a common stock, our language, religion, 
customs, traditions and national consciousness are such strong 
ties between us, that any Greek from Constantinople or 
Rhodes always feels at home in Greece, and no Athenian or 
Corfiote, who happens to come to Turkey ever considers 



lilmself a stranger here. The difference between our condi- 
tion of servitude in Turkey and the freedom under demo- 
cratic government in Greece would be quite sufficient to 
strengthen this relationship and affection, had this been 
necessary. During the war we saw how complete freedom 
was given to the Macedonian Turks to oppose the men who 
are now the members of the present Greek Government; they 
did it in opposition to the unanimous sentiment of the Greeks 
here and to that of an overwhelming* majority in Greece, 
and at the same time the Turks brutally wronged and punish- 
ed us for our inward thoughts and desires. 

II. 

With regard to the practical application of the said prin- 
ciples, through the realization of the Greek aims in certain 
parts of the former Turkish Empire, we deem it necessary 
to make the following observations: 

With these claims and interests, the following countries 
are concerned: 

1. WESTERN THRACE. — The Turkish Government has 
never given up the hope of concluding a victor's treaty. With 
regard to Thrace, they generally claim the recovery of what 
they lost during the Balkan war. It is needless to say that 
Western Thrace has ceased to form part of the Turkish Em- 
pire by virtue of a treaty and though the Turks are quite 
capable of trying to injure an ally, yet from the Greek point 
of view there can be no question of any other than a Greek 
and Bulgarian dispute as far as Western Thrace in concerned. 
As to the Bulgars, they are a decided minority in that country 
as compared to the Greeks; and their civilization is Inferior 
to that of the Greek inhabitants; moreover they have proved 
by their participation in this war that they are incorrigible 
fomenters of trouble in the Balkans, and they advance no 
serious arguments to support their claims on Western Thrace. 
Besides, the way in which the submarine war was carried on 
clearly shows that the removal of the Bulgars from the 
Aegean coast is a question of security for Greece, as well as 
of preventive defense for the Allies, who were perfidiously 
betrayed by the country they themselves had created. 



2. EASTERN THRACE. — It is well-known that the Turks* 
brutal violence has been given full scope in this part of the 
country ever since the Balkan war; Eastern Thrace was never 
left in peace, though nature has endowed her with all the 
gifts that make a country happy and prosperous. 

The Greek population amounts to 320,000 inhabitants, 
and forms the majority in the country. 

The Turkish Government indirectly acknowledged this 
in the official statistics of the Vilayet elaborated in 1901 and 
1903, according to which the Greek population amounted 
to 272,000, the resident subjects of the Greek kingdom, who 
amounted to 30,000 not being included. According to the 
same statistics, the Mohamedans, belonging to the Turkish 
or to any other race amount to 290,000 and are manifestly 
in a minority, as compared to the total non-Moslem popula- 
tion, which amounts to 413,000. 

3. WESTERN ASIA MINOR. — This country is the cradle 
of Hellenic civilization and is connected with Greece by histo- 
rical, religious, geographical and economic ties; its Greek 
population exceeds 1,000,000 as has been acknowledged by 

a pro-Turkish German author, Professor Karl Dieterich,(vid. 
Das Griechentum Kleinasiens. Leipzig 1915, p. 32). This 
country is the only refuge left to hundreds of thousands 
of Christians in the interior, in case they should want to 
escape foreign and particularly Turkish rule. 

A single visit to Smyrna, a city of decidedly Greek 
character, where the Greek language is commonly used, would 
prove clearly how strong are the claims of the Greeks to this 
country. Moreover, all the Turkish statesmen, from Mahmoud 
Shefket Pacha down to Ferid Pacha have very convincingly 
expressed the following opinion, which is incontestably true, 
i. e., that the Islands and the coast opposite them can by no 
means be separated, because this separation would be 
ruinous for both, as well from the economic as from the 
military point of view. This country is not only Greek within 
the limits of the present Greek occupation, it is Greek down 
to its most southern point. When once it comes under the 
rule of a national and liberal Government, the country will 
freely develop Itself and progress accordingly.! In spite of 

10 



the loud outcry raised by the Turkish Government and press, 
as well as by those who support their protests, it is a fact 
that the Turkish natives, tired of being misgoverned, have 
found the Greek occupation satisfactory. For this reason 
places not within the limit of this occupation have requested 
that it be extended and the Mohamedans of the district of 
Salihli, fleeing from the Turkish "liberators" recently sought 
and found shelter within the Greek zone. There really are 
gangs which devastate the country, but such gangs always 
existed and they used to pursue their destructive work with 
still greater activity before the occupation. The number of 
Greeks who were murdered or driven away before the occu- 
pation exceeds 200,000. The unfortunate occurrences that 
followed the occupation are certainly distressing, but they are 
by no means to be compared to the preceding catastrophe. 
The destruction of the Erythrean Peninsula in 1914, where 
not a stone was left standing (all the Greek inhabitants, 
amounting to 70,000 having totally disappeared) as well as 
the destruction of Aivali in 1917, are infinitely graver and 
sadder than the slaughter of 2,000 Greeks, recently carried 
out at Aidin by order of the Turkish Government. These 
bands were first organized in Asia Minor under Halim Pasha 
and during the first year of Rahmi Bey's Government. It is not 
at all surprising to find that such events did not take place 
in the Italian zone, for such gangs were only formed in places 
which were considered as the strongest centres of Greek 
expansion, the points now occupied by the Greeks and the 
coast along the Black Sea and Thrace being considered as 
such by the German Generals. 

2. Moreover, the Turkish Government is not so foolish 
as to fail to understand that it might exhaust the Allies' 
patience and generosity in case it tried to carry on the 
struggle with Italy in spite of the armistice, by organizing 
bands and sending officers, guns and ammunition to strengthen 
them. It also foresees and dreads the application in the 
capital itself of such measures as international law permits 
in case of a violation of official treaties, which measures, if 
applied, would immediately cause the disappearance of ]the 
gangs and would thus put a stop to these misdoings. 

11 



3. The Greek Army in Asia Minor is strong enough to 
assist the Allied Italian Army in case such disorders should 
occur in the Italian zone; its first duty would then be to 
prevent the gangs from using the Greek zone as a refuge and 
as a place for concentrations. These are the reasons why the 
Turkish Government dares not cause disturbances in the Ita- 
lian zone, for there can be no such thing as real friendship 
between Turkey and Italy or any other Christian nation; 
books, bearing the title "Our secular enemies are the Italians" 
are in the hands of the Turkish schoolboys. Sworn declara- 
tions that they would never speak or have any dealings with 
Italians are still held binding by many Turks. During the 
struggle with the gangs, it would appear that certain excesses 
were committed by the Greeks who were exasperated by the 
<5rimes committed by the Turks. No one desires to justify 
these excesses, and least of all the Greek authorities, which 
indemnify all who have suffered and have already condemned 
^1 Christians, of whom one was condemned to death, 6 to 
hard labor and 12 to penal servitude. We should like to 
know how many men have ever been condemned by the Turk- 
ish Government for crimes committed since the beginning of 
the war and what inquiries were instituted by it into the 
massacres of the Greeks in Aidin. 

Whatever line of action the Turkish Government may 
adopt, it must finally be convinced that the measures it takes 
against a nation that claims its independence will not be 
favorably looked in by the Allies and we are sure that the 
Greeks in Asia Minor will not permit the Greek army to 
withdraw but will fight for its retention to the bitter end. 

4. CONSTANTINOPLE.^ — Turkey has no right to this 
city, to which she has brought only destruction and ruin. 
The apparent majority of the Turks over the Greeks vanishes 
when all the non-Moslem population is taken into account. 

There is a large Greek population in Constantinople, 
consisting of several hundreds of thousands of Greeks, who, 
notwithstanding their hatred of the Government, have not 
only achieved economic independence but have even succeeded 
in gaining economic supremacy, thanks to their moral and 

12 



intellectual qualities. The Turks, on the other hand, produce 
nothing, they undertake nothing on their own initiative, they 
have lived in the past and still live today on the property of 
the Christians, confiscated by the aid of the Government, or 
on the taxes levied principally on the Christians. We must 
add that this crowd of wasters is doomed to disappear as 
soon as order shall be established. 

The Turkish Government has invented a new and as yet 
unknown claim on this city; they pretend that Constantinople 
is a sacred centre of Islam. And yet this city was the strong- 
hold of Chirstianityi against Mohammedanism during the 
apogee of Islamism and during the period of the Arabian 
supremacy; the only Turkish features in Constantinople are 
the mosques, which were built by the Greeks and Armenians 
and at their expense. It is true that there exists a verse in 
the Koran, urging the Mohammedans to strive to conquer 
Constantinople, not because this city is considered sacred, 
but because it was the centre of the Christian religion, the 
conquest of which was planned by the Prophet. Verses of 
this kind are to be found in great numbers in this anti- 
Christian book, directed against the Christian countries and 
nations; if the former verse is considered to justify the main- 
tenance of Turkish domination over Constantinople, may not 
the other verses justify the intended extermination of the 
Greeks and Armenians and the accomplishment of this 
"sacred work." 

If the future of Constantinople is to be settled on the 
basis of religion, it is universally known that Rome and 
Byzantium are the two Christian cities par excellence. The 
capital of the Roman Empire was transferred here in order 
that Christianity might triumph; the first church in this city 
was founded by an Apostle; Christianity spread from here 
to the Balkan States and Russia; many Oecumenical Councils 
were held here; it was here that some of the wisest of the 
Church Fathers helped to spread Christianity; and it was on 
the city walls that the last of the Paleologi, with Cardinal 
Isidore and those who fought by their side, declared that 
they were struggling for the glory of Christianity. 

Constantinople was a Greek city in very ancient times; 

13 



it wa« the Hellenic capital, during the Middle Ages, and it is 
today no less Hellenic, its economic and cultural progress 
being due solely to the Greeks, while the Turks have brought 
in barbarism and have only wrought destruction. 

6. BLACK SEA. — The Greek population of the Pontus 
regions on the coast of the Black Sea, together with those 
who have taken refuge in Russia and the Caucasus exceeds 
800,000, and if, for geographical reasons, they cannot realize 
their desire to be united to Greece, they possess the necessary 
elements to form a free and independent commonwealth, 
which could be in contact and close collaboration with the 
Armenian State. 

6. ANATOIflA. — The Greeks, who will remain in the 
interior of Asia Minor, being in a minority there, will have 
to depend on the protection offered by the Powers and they 
hope to have their civil and political rights and the free 
management of their national affairs thus guaranteed to them. 

Hellenism rejoices in the victories of the Allies and the 
liberation of Serbs, Rumanians, Czechs, Poles and others. 
It firmly believes in the justice and generosity of the Great 
Allied Powers and anxiously awaits their noble action in 
effecting the union of the Greek people with Greece and the 
establishment of an Armenian State. Hellenism feels very 
grateful for the permission granted to the Greek army to 
occupy Smyrna, but on the other hand it does not conceal 
its uneasiness, as this act of justice toward Hellenism was 
long postponed; thus also the desires of the population of 
the Dodecanese have not been fulfilled; the people of Northern 
Epirus is still in distress; the occupation of Smyrna has not 
extended as far as it was expected to extend; the future of 
Thrace has not been decided; and while these most important 
Greek questions are still unsolved, the sacrifice of Constanti- 
nople is required of us under some form of mandatory go- 
vernment. This solution does not exclude the possibility 
of including Thrace, which is Greek in character, in this 
projected new State, and thus sacrificing these Greek inte- 
rests and possibly curtailing the rights of the Greeks in other 
parts of the Turkish Empire. 

14 



We like to believe that all these doubts will soon be dU- 
pelled, as it is impossible for the United States, where th« 
rights of small nations were first proclaimed, and for England 
and France, who have for the last century protected us so 
generously, and for Italy, who owes her greatness to the prin- 
ciples on which our rights are based, to permit in the Near 
East the creation of a miniature Poland at the expense of 
Hellenism. We hope that the Greek claims will be favor- 
ably passed upon at the Peace Conference and that our na- 
tional unity will be realized and that peace and order will be 
restored in this country, and that justice will be done to 
all these peoples, including the Armenians. The tyrannical 
domination of a barbarous race will then be replaced by the 
emulation and collaboration of free nations in the works of 
civilization and progress. 



WMMANUELIDES, Deputy of Smyrna. 
CHARALAMBIDES, Deputy of Constantinople. 
T80RBAJ0GL0U, Deputy of Constantinople. 
EUCXiIDES, Deputy of Rodosto. 
DEMETRIADES, Deputy of Metra. 
NEOPHYTOS, Deputy of Gallipoli. 
SIMEONOGLOU, Deputy of Smyrna. 
MEIMAROGLOU, Deputy of Smyrna. 
ARZOGLOU, Deputy of Amisos (Samsoun). 
K.AI.INOGLOU, Deputy of Nigde. 
KEVESSIDES, Deputy of Afion-Karahissar. 

The name of Kosmides, Deputy of Constantinople, does 
not appear because he was absent from the city at the time 
the Memorandum was signed. 



15 



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